


Life After

by chris_the_cynic



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Timelines, Apocalypse, Gen, Time Travel, Undead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7758145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chris_the_cynic/pseuds/chris_the_cynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A villain in the future changes Kim's past, as a result life and death collide and the entire world changes.</p>
<p>In 2029 Kim's daughter is forced to work with her arch-nemesis to survive a hostile and unfamiliar world where neither was ever born.  In 2004 with Kim missing and Ron unconscious, Tara and Josh (later joined by Bonnie and a recovered Ron) step up to face the starting catastrophe.  In an unfriendly region of the afterlife, Kim finds herself completely alone and without her usual tools.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Time Changes

**Author's Note:**

> Shin Possible is the creation of Blackbird and used with permission.
> 
> This isn't a Kigo story. (As noted in the summary, the timeline changed in such a way that Shin was never born.)

**Part I:** **Things Fall Apart**

Chapter 1: Time Changes 

⁂  
▲.▲  
▲    ▲  
▲.▲.▲.▲  
▲           ▲  
▲.▲        ▲.▲  
▲    ▲     ▲    ▲  
▲.▲.▲.▲.▲.▲.▲.▲

**2029 - Earth**

Jacob was wiring something together from components he'd ripped out of cellphones. With the boss he never found himself this bored, but with the boss taking time off for personal reasons, and him needing to stay in fighting trim to be able to fulfill his duty when she came back, he'd been hiring himself out to lesser lights of the villainous world.

With them he felt like the great Shego, before she switched sides, if she'd lost her nail file.

So on the way over he'd picked the pockets of some rich kids, stripped their phones down to the bare essentials, and was now making something. He didn't know what; he didn't care. At the moment he was maximizing power and reception, because those made sense when you started with cell phones, after that he'd probably work on transmission strength.

If you just did what came naturally, you could actually make a lot of progress on a project before you knew what the project would be.

It was certainly better than listening to the slob, who passed for his current employer, drone on.

Mancer was nothing like the boss. He was an nth rate villain who didn't even know that the suffix “-mancer” meant “seer”, as in a prophet or oracle, not “mage” or “magic user” in general. The man couldn't even get his own name right, how could he possibly hope to accomplish anything?

If some hero didn't show up to stop Mancer soon, Jacob thought he might scream. But he concentrated on the device he was making as a way to keep hold on his sanity.

Then the door exploded inward, and there was a distinctive green glow amid the dust and debris of the shattered frame. Jacob smiled. This was why he took the job. He could in fact care less about Mancer's money, but not much. There simply wasn't that much space between the amount he cared and absolute apathy for the caring less to take place in. No, he needed practice, and whichever one of _them_ it turned out to be, Jacob was sure he'd get that.

* * *

Shin walked into the room, a very sparse underground lair mostly in brushed concrete, and saw the stolen relics on a central table arranged for some kind of ritual, already in progress from the looks of it. She also saw her arch nemesis, Jacob, quickly shove something into one of his coat pockets.

“Starting to think you're following me, Possible,” he said. “How did you even know I was here?”

It was half true. When she'd heard about the artifact theft she'd figured the local authorities could handle it until she found out Jacob was in the area. She wasn't going to throw local cops in the path of her arch nemesis even if this whole thing did seem like it was beneath his pay grade and her notice.

Still, it was only half true, and she wasn't about to feed his ego. “You think too highly of yourself,” she said. “I'm here for those,” she pointed at the artifacts.

“Those trinkets?” Jacob asked in obviously fake surprise. “Besides, I thought you brought your girlfriend along on occult missions.”

“She's taking some children trick-or-treating,” Shin snapped.

“That sounds very responsible of her,” Jacob said. There was no jab there, just a simple statement, but Shin knew an attempt to throw her off her game was coming.

“I was looking forward to spending tonight doing that--”

“You are aware it's still light out, right?” Jacob asked,

“Some of the kids are really young,” Shin said. They'd be dropped off at their respective homes before it got too dark, it was all planned out. “Anyway, I was looking forward to watching the children _with her_ but somebody--”

“Has to be the grown up in your relationship,” Jacob said. “So when the call came in she stayed behind to be the responsible one while you came out to play. I get it now.”

Shin had been planing to say that _somebody_ had to go and break the law on Halloween. He made it sound like she _wanted_ to be here instead of with her girlfriend. She was through with the verbal stage of the fight, she tossed a ball of plasma in his direction.

* * *

A key factor in any fight was maintaining an awareness of your surroundings, otherwise you could dodge right into a wall, deflect a blow into a multiphase tachyon transducer, or step right off a cliff.

It was in the course of maintaining that vital awareness that Jacob noticed something.

“Time out,” he called to Shin.

Once he was sure there wouldn't be any plasma coming his way, he addressed Mancer.

“The elder Possible looks pretty young there,” he said pointing to to a hole in reality itself, hovering in the air, that showed the spot in space and time Mancer intended to affect.

Mancer didn't respond to Jacob and instead continued reciting an incantation that he erroneously thought was in Latin. The fact Mancer didn't know it wasn't Latin set Jacob's mind somewhat at ease. What harm could a fool like Mancer really do?

“I hope my real boss rejoins the game soon,” Jacob said to Shin, “freelancing sucks.”

“My heart aches for you,” Shin said in perfect deadpan.

“You have any idea regarding how long ago that is?” Jacob asked Shin.

“That's the transportulator,” Shin said pointing to a device her mother was standing near in image of the past.

“Dr. Dementor's hardline transporter?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah.”

“Which Drakken tricked your mom into stealing it because she's so very easy--”

“Yes.”

“Caused no less than sixteen people to become convinced we were living in the Matrix?”

“Yes already!”

“When did your mom deal with it?” Jacob asked.

“High school,” Shin said. Jacob's eyes went wide. “Near the start of junior year.”

“Mancer!” Jacob shouted. “You can't mess with 2004! I won't even be born if you screw up that part of the timeline!”

Mancer did finally look at Jacob. “That's of no concern to me; I was already around.”

“You think you'd be the same person with more than twenty years of your life swapped out for those in the new timeline!?” Jacob shouted. “You'll annihilate yourself and turn your life and body over to someone else!”

“I'm protected,” Mancer said.

When a ball of plasma exploded against an invisible sphere that, Jacob estimated, was centered on Mancer. Jacob did the only sensible thing. He flinched back and raised his arms to cover his face for protection.

“Warn me before you do something like that,” Jacob shouted back toward Shin, then he turned to Mancer again, “You think a magical shield is going to save you from changing the entire damned timeline?”

“No,” Mancer said in a condescending way. That was good, condescension could lead to explanation. “Whosoever takes one of the thirteen malachite amulets from the sacred urn,” Mancer said gesturing at a skyphos, which was nothing like an urn, “is immune to timeline changes.”

The skyphos was inside of the invisible bubble, Jacob couldn't reach it. Besides, he had a different question, “Why thirteen? There's just one of you.”

“Feeble minds such as yours cannot hope to understand the complexities--”

“The spell called for a full tribunal, didn't it?” Shin asked.

Jacob turned to Shin and didn't hide the confusion he was feeling.

“A tribunal is composed so that it has one and only one member who was born in each of the lunar months,” Shin explained.

Jacob nodded. Thirteen months in a lunar year.

“If it's intended for a tribunal it means that they thought anyone attempting to do it on their own was dangerously stupid,” Shin said.

Mancer snorted like any half-rate villain who'd had incompetence exposed, and then said, “You clearly don't understand the--”

“You weren't smart enough to modify the spell into a single practitioner affair,” Jacob said, “so you took the much easier shortcut of tricking the spell into thinking there were twelve other people and then preformed it as originally written, right?”

“You served your purpose,” Mancer said. “You distracted her until the ritual itself protected me and now nothing can stop it. See!” He pointed at the hole in reality that was a window through time. The image of Kim Possible dialing the telephone number of her school in preparation for using the transportulator flickered, then she was shown to have dialed a five where in the original timeline she'd put in a six.

Jacob was confused.

“That's it?” Jacob asked. “You've summoned power so great it threatens to tear the universe asunder and all you did was change a six to a five?”

“Don't underestimate the little things, my former employee,” Mancer said.

“For want of a nail?' Jacob asked.

“Nothing so subtle,” Mancer said. There was cruelty in the laugh that followed.

Shin turned to Jacob, “What if the changed number was a cellphone number?”

A look of horror passed over Jacob's face. There was a reason that the transportulator was hardline _only_.

“Nothing so provincial,” Mancer said.

Mancer grabbed one of the malachite amulets from the skyphos, then disappeared in a puff of something Jacob was pretty sure wasn't logic. The world around them started to warp and twist.

“Grab the malachite!” Shin shouted. Jacob lunged, taking on faith that the magic shield had disappeared with Mancer, and got a piece just as the last remnants of the spell collapsed into nothingness.

The room went dark.

* * *

Jacob coughed somewhere to her right. “That is foul,” he said.

Shin agreed. The air, which had been fine before, now made her want to retch and her stomach churned with every breath she took.

Shin lit her right hand. The green glow showed a largely unchanged lair, the walls were where they left them, the ten remaining malachite amulets were where they'd fallen when she and Jacob had knocked over their container in their rush to get one each.

“Show off,” Jacob grumbled, looking at Shin's lit hand. Then he reached into one of his pockets, rummaged a bit, and finally removed one of his improvised inventions. When he put it on a small illuminated disk was held in the palm of his hand. When he activated it, which he did in spite of it having no obvious controls, it became a flashlight, shining out in electric blue.

“Now who's the show off?” Shin asked, but Jacob seemed more concerned with what he was seeing.

Shin looked around again, with the added light from Jacob she could see massive changes that had been invisible before.

Every surface seemed to be covered in mold, explaining the foul air, and mushrooms had grown through the floor and walls in cracks that hadn't been there before. What little wood there had been was rotted. Metal rusted.

It got worse from there.

“This whole place is drowning in decay,” Shin said.

“Let's get out of here,” Jacob said, “before we inhale something we'll regret.”

“I already regret it,” Shin said.

They were nemeses, but they'd worked together more than once and, as long as neither of them acknowledged camaraderie, it shouldn't complicate their relationship too much to do it again now.

Shin collected the ten other amulets into a pouch, and followed Jacob out of the room.

* * *

Jacob heard Shin emerge from the remnants of the building, walk over the same rubble he'd come over, and finally stop beside him. He barely registered any of it.

“This was a city when we went underground, right?” Shin said.

Jacob surveyed the wreckage again. Buildings reduced to mounds, roads and sidewalks cracked by what passed for vegetation --mostly myriad forms of fungus that seemed to have decided to replace trees, bushes, grass, and everything else that grew-- other places where it was simply impossible to tell what had been road, sidewalk, building, and so forth, rust heaps that might once have been cars and trucks, --no sign of recent human habitation. Also not enough rubble. It was as if the fallen tops of the buildings had been reduced to dust and blown away.

Then he said, “We'll want to look for new construction--”

“Less than 25 years old,” Shin said, “or thereabouts.”

“Exactly,” Jacob said, “What changed after he changed time.”

“How could one digit change all this?” Shin asked.

“Your mother was teleporting,” Jacob said. “Where she went, we don't know. What she found there, we don't know. How, if at all, she made it back, we don't know.”

“You think she brought something back with her?” Shin asked.

Jacob nodded.

“Something from elsewhere.”

Jacob nodded.

“Then the question becomes, 'What could have done all this?'” Shin gestured to the remains of the city.

“I don't know,” Jacob said as he looked around again, “but I haven't seen chipmunk or squirrel or heard a single bird chirp, since we got outside.”

* * *

“You think everything's dead?” Shin asked. Fungus seemed to rule the city, so something lived.

It didn't just live, it thrived to an impossible degree. Various mushrooms ranged in size from normal to the size of trees. Other fungi in evidence had relatively thin membranes instead of stalks or caps, and the membranes folded in on themselves into strange shapes. Somewhere between those two two were orange peel fungus, which Shin recognized from her time as a pixie scout, it didn't fold that much, and the cup shape kind of almost looked like a mushroom cap sometimes, if you squinted. They definitely weren't supposed to be waist height though. In their own way they were as impressive as the tree sized mushrooms. Other things were all stem, they reached up in the twisting bending columns that Shin thought she recognized as “coral fungus”. There were also ones that were mostly bulbous things in clusters like some kind of strange, sometimes giant, grapes.

When she looked for a living thing other than fungus the best she could do was note that a single tree in the distance existed and even looked alive.

“At least it's colorful,” Jacob said.

Bright orange fungus, white fungus, red fungus, bright yellow fungus, a bit of pale purple fungus. A fair range. It was colorful. But that was hardly the point.

“Forget the scenery,” Shin said, “Just do your mad science thing and--”

“Angry science is seldom good science,” Jacob said.

“You know what I mean,” Shin said, “just--”

Something moved in her peripheral vision.

“What?” Jacob asked.

“Did you see--”

Something else moved.

“Saw it,” Jacob said. “Back to back?”

“Yeah,” Shin said. Jacob pulled his hand-flashlight off and pulled out “gloves” Shin had grown to hate. They didn't look like much: wires connecting various small panels --mostly disk shaped, which seemed to be Jacob's preferred format. The disks at the palms didn't look all that different from his flashlight, actually.

The gloves had two main functions. One wouldn't matter as Jacob didn't have his hoverboard. The other was that it allowed him to catch and redirect her plasma. It was like the xistera hand mods on her mother's battle-suit, but worse.

Soon he was out of her field of view, one of the downsides of standing back to back, but by the time Jacob's shoulder blades touched her own she heard the soft hum that meant the gloves were active.

“Pass me ammo?” Jacob asked.

In each hand Shin formed a plasma ball the size of a softball, then shot them straight back.

“Thanks,” Jacob said.

“I don't like that they're not letting us see them,” Shin said.

“That's what worries you?” Jacob asked.

“If we don't know what we're facing, we can't form a plan,” Shin said.

“Which is why it's an unremarkable tactic to keep an enemy off balance,” Jacob said.

“So what's got you worried O' great and smart evil one?” Shin said with what she figured was just enough contempt that it would let Jacob know how she felt without damaging their ability to fight as a unit.

“That they're swarming,” Jacob said.

Shin hadn't been paying attention to that. She'd been so focused on trying to get a clear look at one of them that she hadn't noticed how much movement she was picking up in the unclear looks. Bodies mostly hidden by what used to be buildings, or behind the tree sized mushrooms and assorted other fungus. Non-stop motion at the periphery --the one place neither she nor Jacob would be able to get a clear look.

“Unless you're planning on repeatedly stopping during combat to give me fresh plasma,” Jacob said, “I've got two shots before I'm close combat only.” Shin nodded even though she knew Jacob couldn't see it. “I don't like the idea of letting that many opponents get close.”

“Getting soft?” Shin asked.

“You wish,” Jacob said.

Then the charge started.

They came from all sides and rushed the hero and the villain.

When Shin saw how they looked, she said, “If they wanted me off balance they should have let me see see how they looked from the start.”

Jacob responded with, “Given that they look like _that_.”

Four shots of plasma were fired, and the battle was joined.

 

**⁂  
2004 - Earth**  

“It really does work like a phone,” Kim said. She dialed the number for Middleton high school back in the US. There was a ring, then a high tone, then a trilling tone, and Kim was gone.

* * *

By the time Mr. Barkin said, “Last call for Kim Possible,” Tara was pretty sure everyone in the auditorium knew why Ron's act had gone on for so long. He'd always been there for her and he'd been doing it again. Stalling so that she'd have time to make it from wherever she was.

Sometimes Tara thought Ron was a bit too loyal. This time he'd given himself a head injury, in the stunt that finally ended his act, just so Kim could make it to a largely meaningless competition. Sure, Bonnie had pushed Tara into showing up for what she saw as her inevitable victory, but apart from the people in the room, who really cared about the talent show?

At the resounding silence, the utter lack of any sign of Kim, Mr. Barkin said, “Ok, then--”

There was an explosion. Tara felt the shock wave as much as heard the blast.

Mr. Barkin said, “Nobody--” and that was when the lights went out, and everyone panicked.

Then came the sounds of screaming from backstage.

Tara didn't actually decide to get out of her seat, she didn't decide to rush through the darkness, she didn't decide to move toward the screaming. She just thought, _Ron_ , and found herself on her way. She said, “Sorry” and, “Excuse me,” to the people she bumped on the way.

She was up on stage, almost at the curtains, by the time the first light sources came on: BlackBerries that parents in the audience thought to turn on so they could use the light from the screens. By then the screaming had stopped.

As she moved backstage she followed the lead of the parents, though the only light her phone produced was a from a pitiful green diode that served to let her know the phone was on. Still, with her eyes adjusted to the darkness, a small LED was all she needed.

She found Ron unconscious, his head bandaged, Rufus standing guard over Ron, and no one else.

The emergency lights came on. When her eyes adjusted to the new light she saw blood and a few scraps of clothing. A bunch of blood on the floor and a nearby wall in one place, a trail of blood leading out a door. Someone had been hurt --a lot-- and then their bleeding body had been dragged from the room.

Tara cautiously looked through the doorway the blood trail led out of.

What greeted her was a regular hall, except for the blood. Since it wasn't a controlled environment like the auditorium, light came not just from the emergency lights, but also from outside. It had to pass through a window, a classroom, and a door window to reach the hall, but Tara was willing to take what she could get.

Sill, other than the blood trail, there was no sign of whoever had been hurt or whatever had hurt them. Tara knew better than to go off alone; she was about to close the door and get help when the emergency lights started to flicker and die.

It caught her attention and interest.

She knew that Middleton High wasn't exactly a paragon of safety, but there was no way the emergency lights had batteries that would fail this quickly. Something was wrong. The failures had started at the far end of the hall, but they were steadily making their way toward her, and thus the darkness approached. Tara had an deep, disturbing feeling that something was coming for her.

She felt a chill that she thought she was probably just imagining, slammed the door, and ran to join the others. 

* * *

“Someone is missing and hurt!” shouted a blonde girl Josh didn't know that well. A cheerleader maybe?

Josh generally tried to help out where he could, but he had another reason for going to help this time: Kim was the only person he knew of who was missing. Going to the Spirit Week dance together was the closest they'd come to actually going on a date, but they both liked each other and Josh thought there was a connection there.

He definitely felt concerned for her in a way that was different than the concern he felt for others.

Josh reached the backstage area at the same time as more or less everyone else who had answered the girl's call which meant that he ended up in a crowd where the view was mostly of the backs of people's heads. The audience of the talent show had been mostly adult relatives of the performers, which meant most of them were tall enough to stop Josh from seeing much of anything.

He heard Barkin ask, “What's going on here, Ms.--” and knew something was very wrong. It wasn't like Barkin to stop in the middle of a sentence.

Josh pushed through the crowd a bit in hopes of seeing what had made Barkin--

And then he wanted to vomit.

Josh was pretty unshakable about a lot of things, but he wasn't good with blood. Barkin gave orders to some willing volunteers and they left to follow the trail of blood. Josh stayed behind.

Almost everyone else went back into the auditorium where the debate over whether it was better to stay in one place or bravely run away was still ongoing. That left him in the room with the blonde girl and Stoppable, who was unconscious. Maybe he could do something to help Stoppable. That would be _something_ , at least.

“Is he ok?” Josh asked the blonde girl.

“I don't know,” she said, “There was no one else here.”

Josh nodded. Whoever had been treating Stoppable must have been the one whose blood...

Josh pushed the thought from his head.

Someone was going to have to assess Stoppable's head wound. For some reason half of his head was bandaged even though his injury really, truly didn't call for that. He'd hit his head very hard, but it hadn't broken the skin and there should be nothing under all the bandaging but a lump. A large lump probably, but just a lump.

Josh was pretty sure he could handle a large lump, so he said, “Maybe we should take a--”

And the phone rang.

Of course the phone rang. By now there must be have been a dozen calls from frightened parents about an explosion at the school, and that was assuming that calls about the … missing person hadn't been made yet.

Hard line phones still worked when the power was out --something about drawing power from their own line or ... something-- so of course the phone rang. Josh didn't actually want to be the one who answered but the blonde girl seemed intent on staying at Stoppable's side, so he picked up on the third ring.

“Ron!” the voice on the other end said.

“No, this is Josh Mankey,” Josh said. “Ron's hurt.”

“Not Ron too,” the voice said. Then it asked, “What happened?”

“Who is this?” Josh asked.

“My name is Wade, I work with Kim and Ron.”

Josh nodded to himself. Everyone who knew about Kim and Ron knew about Wade.

“Ron hurt himself doing a stunt for the talent show,” Josh said. There was nothing Wade could do to help with that. What really interested Josh was something Wade had said. “What did you mean when you said 'Ron _too_ '?”

“Kim's missing,” Wade said. “She tried to use the transportulator to get to the show but--”

“What's a transportulator?” Josh asked. In spite of the situation, he couldn't help but be amused by the name.

“It's a teleportation device that piggybacks its signal over the phone lines,” Wade said, “but when she tried to get to you guys Kim just disappeared.”

A connection was made in Josh's mind. “There was an explosion--”

“An explosion?”

“Yes,” Josh said, “pay attention. There was an explosion, could that have been,” Josh suddenly found it very hard to speak. Finally he managed to finish his question with, “Kim?”

“I'm looking into-- no. If it were Kim I'd be getting at least some kind of signal from-- that's not important,” Wade said. “Based on the timing it probably was somehow related to what happened to Kim. I need Ron to--”

“Ron's unconscious!” Josh shouted. He hadn't meant to shout. It just came out that way. He felt bad about shouting because Wade had no way of knowing about the state Ron was in. Still, Ron wouldn't be helping. Josh said, “Tell me what to do.”

“Ok,” Wade said. Then the line went silent. It stayed silent. Josh was about to assume the connection had been lost and hang up when Wade spoke again. “You'll need to pick up equipment from Kim's locker. I'll contact you when you get there.”

“Ok,” Josh said, “I'm going but we've got more problems than just Ron and Kim, can you contact emergency services?”

“What happened?” Wade asked.

Josh looked at the blonde girl, “It's Kim and Ron's friend, Wade, can you tell him what happened?” he asked. “Something happened to Kim and I need to go.”

She nodded and took the phone.

Josh heard her say, “Wade, it's Tara,” as he left the backstage area.

The auditorium was about half empty when Josh crossed it, apparently there had been a fifty-fifty split, more or less, on the “stay or go” debate. It made it easier for Josh to run through it, then out of it, and the halls were clear as he headed in the direction of Kim's locker.

* * *

“Wade, it's Tara. I'm friends with Kim and Ron,” Tara said into the phone.

“Can you tell me what's going on?” Wade asked. “I think Josh left some things out.”

Tara told Wade everything that had happened. When she finished, she heard a flurry of typing and then Wade said, “Fire, police and medical services are already on the way because of the explosion, I'll make sure they know that there's a wild animal or something--”

“Or something,” Tara said.

“-on the loose.” Tara heard typing. “That's odd.” More typing.

“What's odd?” Tara asked.

“There's more help headed your way than there should be.”

There was an unexplained explosion, someone had been mauled and was missing, possibly dead, Ron was unconscious, Kim was missing --though apparently Josh was working on that-- what could possibly be more help than they needed right now? So she asked, “What does that mean?”

“It looks like all of Middleton's emergency--” typing. “It's not just the high school.” Wade said. More typing.

“What's not just the high school?” Tara asked, though she had a feeling she didn't really want to know the answer.

“Local 911 has been inundated by calls in your area,” Wade said. “Animal attacks, strange sounds, unexplained blackouts” typing “Everything is centered on the high school.”

“Great,” Tara said. She didn't have any emotion left to give.

“Police are advising people to shelter in place,” Wade said. “Tara, get yourself and Ron to a safe place and then barricade yourselves in.”

“Wade,” Tara said.

“I have to go.” The line went dead.

“Damn it,” Tara said.

Then she went to Ron again. “Wake up sleepyhead,” she said in a way that she hoped hid her fear. The last thing she needed was for Ron to wake up in a panic.

* * *

It was strange being told the combination to a locker by a voice from inside of it, but all things considered it was one of the most normal things since the talent show went wrong.

As soon as Josh opened the locker, Wade said, “Josh, change of plans,” over the video link on the computer Kim kept crammed in her locker. “Fact-finding and Kim-finding is on hold.”

It took Josh a moment to process that.

“What do you mean finding Kim is on hold?” Josh asked.

“Something very bad is happening in your area right now,” Wade said, “and everyone who left the talent show after the power outage --including you-- is in danger.”

“Go on,” Josh said, trying to absorb the new information.

“The animal attack, which you didn't mention, isn't an isolated incident,” Wade said. Josh felt a moment's guilt about not mentioning that, but only a moment. There was a lot going on and he didn't think it was wrong to be concerned that Kim might have been blown up. “They're happening all around you.

“I needed you to get everyone who's out in the open and send them somewhere safe,” Wade said.

“If they're happening in the area shouldn't we get _out_ of the area?” Josh asked. “Also, in case you forgot where I was headed next, there was an explosion here. What about the boom?”

“The area has a two mile radius and is expanding,” Wade said. “Everyone needs to get inside behind locked doors until we figure out what's going on. As for the boom, unless you've got a reason to think it wasn't an isolated incident, the ongoing animal attacks are a more immediate concern.”

Josh thought about that for a moment, since when did Team Possible take a run and hide approach?

“I can't blame you if you don't want to take the risk of helping,” Wade said, “but Kim is missing, Rufus weighs less than a paperback--”

“Seriously?” Josh asked.

“I know, with all he eats you'd think he'd weigh more,” Wade said. “Anyway, that's Kim and Rufus. Ron is unconscious, and if she listened to me, then Tara is dragging Ron to a hiding place as we speak, so you're kind of the only person I'm in contact with on scene and I could really use some help rounding everyone up.”

Josh thought it over and then said, “What do I do?”

“Obviously Kim took her mission gear with her on her mission, but there are still some useful things in Kim's locker. Outdated tech, backup gear, that sort of thing. You're going to need . . .”

* * *

Ron had woken up, but it was touch and go, and he was barely capable of supporting his own weight. He wasn't going to be going anywhere in a hurry. Still, Tara was preparing to get him out of the area when Barkin and the others who had followed the blood trail ran back into the room and slammed the door behind them.

“Block it with something!” Someone shouted.

Three adults were holding the door closed, and when something on the other side hit the door it looked like they might not be enough. There was a growling sound that, Tara estimated, came from something very large, and then there was the horrible sound of _something_ clawing at the metal door.

Two members of the party were clearly injured. All were afraid.

For a moment Tara was frozen with indecision. It was just a moment though. She'd long since learned a lesson that neither Kim nor Bonnie had managed: delegate.

“Do I help you or evacuate the others?”

“Evacuate the compromised premises!” Barkin shouted.

“Got it,” Tara said. She turned her attention to Ron, “Sorry, we don't have time.”

“Wha?” was all Ron said before she started to pick him up.

Ron was over Tara's shoulders and she was heading for the auditorium within a few seconds.

“Rufus?” Tara asked.

“Uh-huh?” The rodent asked.

“Keep an eye on him for me.”

“Ok,” Rufus said before he climbed onto Tara and then onto Ron.

When Tara was on the stage she made use of an asset gained from cheerleading: a shouting voice that made microphones and amplification unnecessary:

“Listen up everyone, it's not safe here and we have to move somewhere else.”

“What's going on?” Bonnie asked.

“Not completely sure,” Tara said, “but apparently the police are telling people to shelter in place so we just have to get to a safe place to shelter.”

“Define safe,” Someone said.

“Someone's been mauled here,” Tara said, “there are a bunch of reports of wild animal attacks in the entire area, and no one knows what that explosion was.”

All that remained was to determine what the safest place in the school was. Tara was in favor this debate taking place on the move, and led by example.

When not everyone chose to follow her example she added, “Also, one of the killer beasts is in the process of breaking down a door to get into the backstage area.”

Everyone looked at the curtain that separated backstage from on stage. A moment later everyone started to exit the auditorium.

* * *

Josh had made contact with just five groups so far. Admittedly some of them were pretty large, but they were all stragglers who'd gotten turned around in the high school's halls. He wasn't sure how much of a difference he was really making. Every time he'd made contact he'd given them directions from Wade that, hopefully, would lead to them joining up with Tara's group.

Most of the work of finding the people had been done with a prototype Kimmunicator which showed him human heat signatures, represented by red dots, superimposed on a map of the school.

Wade's voice crackled in, Josh guessed that the crackling was part of why this particular Kimmunicator was filed under “abandoned prototype” rather than “back up; early model.”

Wade said, “Josh, I've done some work toward adapting the system we're using to locate other people to also show . . . non-human heat signatures.”

“Non-human?” Josh asked. He probably didn't want to know. Don't think about blood.

“It seems impossible, but I'm picking up things that are significantly colder than the ambient temperature and _not heating up_. Ordinary cold blooded creatures would slowly warm or cool to room temperature, but these things . . . it's like someone reversed the polarity on warm blooded metabolism.”

“You do realize that what you just said makes no sense and doesn't really mean anything, right?” Josh asked. He'd taken biology class, he'd paid attention to the part about thermoregulation.

“It always worked with Kim and Ron,” Wade said. There was a short pause then, “ _Anyway_ , I'm sending updated protocols to your device. Avoid the blue dots.”

There was a bit of static, then several blue dots appeared on his map in addition to the red dots that had been there before.

One of them was close and getting closer.

“Wade, one of the blue dots--”

“Run!”

Josh did.

“I'm sorry! I didn't notice that one,” Wade said quickly as Josh ran down a hall. “I'm going to go radio silent and then see if I can find a way to lure it away from you. Find a place to hide, Josh.”

A moment later he didn't have to place his faith in a blue dot on an electronic map. A crash behind him had him turn to look at a mass of black fur, he didn't make out much of anything about the shape or size, but he did note the pristine white _teeth_.

Before he saw it he didn't think he could run any faster, after he saw it he was running faster without trying or indeed thinking about it.

A random, completely unfounded, downright Ron-like, probably-bad idea popped into Josh's head and he headed for the cafeteria.

* * *

Tara surveyed, for what seemed to be the thousandth time, the people she was with.

Barkin and his group had caught up to them after doing what they could to seal the backstage door and then the most direct doors out of the auditorium. Barkin had advised that they seek out a half-forgotten fallout shelter under the gym building. It was the best suggestion anyone had had so far. That just meant getting through the halls from the auditorium to the exit, across open space to the gym, and from there to the shelter.

If the auditorium hadn't recently been refurbished, of course, they'd have held the talent show in the gym and thus be there already. Sometimes even good things turned out to be bad things.

Tara focused on the task in front of her. She was carrying Ron to a place he'd hopefully be safe and shepherding these people to the same place. Wade and Josh had both sent more people her way, and their group had grown in size.

Now they had perhaps as much as a three quarters of the people who attended the talent show.

They just had to make it somewhere safe.

The smell of blood coming off Barkin's group and some of the newcomers wouldn't make things easy, though and they'd already had to turn around several times to avoid the sounds of large animals.

* * *

Josh made it into the cafeteria only a few seconds ahead of his pursuer and vaulted over the counter. Now he put all of his hopes in mystery meat. No self-respecting predator would ever think to touch stuff, and hopefully its smell would disguise his own.

He tried to slow his breathing, but had no luck.

Then he heard the doors forced open with a crash.

He wasn't sure if he could breathe now even if he'd wanted to.

It followed his scent, or perhaps just intuition, to where he jumped over the counter, but then Josh heard the footfalls stop. There was sniffing, just over the counter, and only mystery meat between Josh and those shiny white teeth.

 

**⁂  
2004 – Unknown**

“It really does work like a phone,” Kim said. She dialed the number for Middleton high school back in the US. There was a ring, then a high tone, then a trilling tone, and the world was gone.

When Kim hit the ground she was moving forward fast, even though a moment ago she'd been standing still.

The jagged ground scraped her all over before she came to a stop.

“Dementor must not have ironed all the bugs out,” Kim said as she got to her feet. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized that she was in a cavern of some sort. Some other part of Drakken's lair?

If it was, it was a part he hadn't been using. There was no sign of human activity anywhere.

The fact that she could see was oddly disconcerting considering that there was also no sign of any light source. The stone offered no clues. It seemed to be an nondescript flat gray, but it could simply be that the lighting was too dim for her color vision to be working.

The “room” she found herself in had several tunnels leading out of it implying it was part of a larger network of underground caves, but it offered no evidence of how the network had been formed. It showed no signs of being carved by erosion, there were no signs of mineral deposits being laid down, nothing looked cut or broken, if a weaker or more water soluble type of earth had been washed out to make the cave, it had left no evidence behind.

Knowing from experience that _up_ was usually a good way to go, she picked the tunnel that most looked like it could lead there.

Drakken had confiscated her Kimmunicator and she hadn't actually stopped to get it back, she'd dropped the ring communicator in the not-actually-bottomless “bottomless” pit when the shark had smacked her in the face with its tail. Wade probably had her chipped, just like Ron, but that didn't mean _she_ could contact _him_.

She was on her own for now.

* * *

Kim had been going so long with no sounds but her own footsteps and breathing that at first she wasn't sure whether the new sounds were incredibly faint real sounds, or her imagination trying to give her the chance of pace she so desperately wanted. She did her best to find out.

As she drew nearer she was sure that there was something walking through the tunnels and caverns. Unfortunately she was also sure that it wasn't human. The soft footfalls weren't in the right rhythm. The breathing was all wrong.

She almost lost the sound after an echo caused her to take the wrong turn, but when she got back on track she was closer than ever. It was definitely an animal. A big one, she thought. But a big one with soft feet.

Not that Kim expected to find something with hooves in a cave, caves tended to be hostile to hooved animals, but she was putting together whatever information she could pull from what she was hearing and right now it said large animal with soft feet.

She finally caught up and found herself peering around a corner at a giant mass of black fur. It was hard to make out in the dim lighting, but the tail was what allowed her to figure it out. There were only so many things that had a tail like that. It was a black dog, but too big to be a normal dog while, at the same time, much smaller than she'd expect a super-villain's pet project to be.

It either didn't notice her, or didn't care. Since it seemed to know where it was going Kim decided to follow it. Maybe it knew the way out of this place.

In the process she was able to get a better sense of what it looked like as she glimpsed new angles whenever it turned. Significantly large than a Saint Bernard, shaped like a wolf, soot black fur, bone white teeth.

* * *

The dog she'd been following joined up with another that was just like it. Same breed? Same litter? Whatever the case the first dog fell in beside the new one and they continued to wherever they were going.

For what she estimated to be fifteen minutes Kim was following the two dogs. Then another joined. Later another, and another. Each time one joined in with the others they sped up a bit.

By the time there were dozens of large, unkempt, nearly identical dogs Kim was sure that someone had bred or cloned a dog army. At last things were making sense. While she had no idea whose lair she was in, she could easily face off against whatever villain was thrown at her.

All she had to do was follow the dogs to wherever they were going, then there'd be a gloating super-villain who would explain everything.

Plus, the dogs seemed to be doing a good job of moving in a generally upward direction and, unlike her, they never ran into a dead end.

* * *

Kim slipped.

It barely made a noise maybe-- Kim cursed canine hearing; at least ten of the dogs had broken off from the group and were coming her way

Where before Kim had had a goal and direction --get out, go up-- now Kim wasn't thinking ahead at all. Every move she made was strictly in the moment. Would a zig or a zag be better at shaking her pursuers? Jumps down broke line of sight more quickly than running on level ground so soon she was deeper than where she'd started.

* * *

Kim finally thought she'd lost the last of the dogs, but she was now thoroughly lost. She was also exhausted. What little map she'd created in her head was useless now, she had no idea where she'd been and where she hadn't.

Worse, some of the places she'd jumped down were ones where she was pretty sure that she couldn't get back up again. Drakken had confiscated her grappler too.

She just had to try to get the lay of the land from scratch. Again.

* * *

Kim followed a light, but all it led her to was a cavern with glowing threadlike growths spider-webbing around it. Kim knew that the correct term was “mycelium” but she always thought of them as “mushroom roots”. They looked like roots, they were connected to mushrooms (sometimes) so “mushroom roots” made sense to her.

How deep did they go? Could she be near the surface?

There was no obvious way up to find out. A detailed search of the nearby parts of the cave system did yield fruit, though not of the sort she was looking for.

“Honey Fungus,” Kim said to the empty air. The tightly packed honey colored mushrooms were things she remembered from her days as a scout.

“You're a plant pathogen,” Kim said to the mushrooms, “where are the plants?”

The soil pile they were growing from could be wood that had rotted beyond all recognition, but if it were it would have had to get in there somehow, and she wasn't seeing any sign that a way out of the caves was nearby.

She ate some of the mushrooms, knowing they were edible.

* * *

Despite her best efforts Kim seemed to be going deeper into the caves, and the ecology made no sense. An albino salamander hurried to hide from her on a wall covered with oyster mushrooms. They grew on trees, not stone. They weren't lichen, and even if they had been, lichen needed sunlight to survive.

Green light that led her into another chamber was a tightly packed clump of bioluminescent mushrooms, again tree mushrooms, again no wood in evidence.

It was possible, if unlikely, that the wood was always hidden by the mushrooms themselves, but if so, where did the wood come from?

If she was getting deeper then wouldn't that mean she was getting farther away from things the mushrooms could feed on?

Unless the cave were upside-down. She wouldn't put it past some of the villains she knew to make a lair where the gravity was somehow reversed.

* * *

The next big surprise was a cave of dead moths. Thin white tendrils extending in all directions from their corpses.

Kim really, really did not like these caverns. She'd been in various cave systems in her life and not once, before this one, had one tried to shock her by throwing a room full of dead insects with God knew what growing out of them.

Where had the moths come from? She hadn't bumped into any before. For there to be dead moths there must logically have been live moths and it didn't seem likely that they would all have died in the exact same place: this particular cave.

She moved on. Quickly.

* * *

Soon she had soil beneath her feet. That had to be a good sign, right? Soil didn't just come out of nowhere, a whole host of natural processes went into creating it.

Also, some live moths.

* * *

At first it had been faint sounds, but she followed them and the sounds resolved into words. Someone talking, at length, to him or herself. Standard super-villain stuff. For the first time since she lost the dogs, she was comfortably in the presence of something that made sense.

She approached while sticking to the shadows.

Finally she was able to make out the words.

“The dogs go first like always, but the dogs haven't gone for ages. The way they're going it must be a big one, first in centuries and big, big like never before. Doggies and darkness go first, clear the way. Then the unseen, and finally the population gets to move,” the voice said.

Even though she hadn't heard that much yet, Kim was already prepared to reach two conclusions. One: the voice was female; two: she wasn't going to get anything out of it. Whoever it was was simply too far beyond sense.

“The people move, but not me, not me, gone ages ago. Should be unseen myself, so they say. So they say. They say, but I won't settle for that. No, no. Why would I go there. Ought to be a person, I should. Why would I give up that? No, I just have to find-- Hello there.”

Kim couldn't see the source of the voice yet, but somehow she was convinced that it was talking to her.

“Why don't you come out, young one? Let me see you.”

That was quite coherent. Maybe, just maybe, Kim could get answers.

“Don't be afraid,” the voice said, “I won't harm a hair on your head.”

Kim continued down the tunnel she was in and soon came to the entrance to one of the caverns.

“Why, I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt that lovely body of yours.”

Ferociously creepy, but a chance at answers. Kim walked into the cavern.

Water pooled in the far end of the cavern, it looked like some kind of underground stream must have bumped into a depression here or something. On the near side was what might be an improvised dwelling for one or two people, it was hard to tell. Nearer still was the source of the voice.

“Not something so fresh. No, no,” the owner of the voice said. She was an adult dressed in old clothes. Like Jamestown-reenactment old. She was also somewhat transparent.

“Such a fresh, warm body, still juicy, wouldn't want to harm it in the least,” she said.

Slim possibility of a hologram, but probably a ghost. Kim hadn't dealt with a ghost before, but she'd seen a fair amount of magic.

“I'd never harm a body such as yours, what with there being so little chance of having another so fresh sent to me.”

Very creepy ghost.

“Where am I?” Kim asked.

“Why the After, deary,” the ghost said. “All those restrictions placed on you before are gone now. Wouldn't you like to get out of that confining thing and take a look around?”

“What thing?” Kim asked.

“That delightfully fresh body of yours; doesn't it feel like a straight jacket?”

Very, very creepy ghost.

“It places so many limits on you. Don't you want to fly?” the ghost started to move towards Kim. “I promise I'll take good care of it while you're gone. Not harm a single hair on its juicy scalp. I'd never have that.”

Kim started walking backward, maintaining the distance between herself and the ghost.

“I think I'll be keeping my body on,” Kim said. “If you could just tell me the way out of here.”

“Oh, you don't want to go that way,” the ghost said, “hairy stinky dogs there. Doggies always go first. They can smell the air from the living world. Drawn to it, they are.”

“Just the same,” Kim said, “I think I'll be going now.”

“That's not nice,” the ghost said. “Didn't anyone ever teach you to share?”

“Definitely going,” Kim said.

“The fastest way is to fly, but you can't take that fresh body of yours with you when you fly,” the ghost said. “So if you really want to go, just fly away and I'll keep the body safe.”

Possibly the most coherent thing the ghost had said since, “Let me see you.” Definitely the most disturbing.

“Going,” Kim said with what she hoped was finality. Then she ran.

Today was, apparently, a day for running.

* * *

Kim felt that she was almost spent. She didn't have another run in her. The ghost had been hard to shake. She had to be more stealthy. So when she finally saw a sign of civilization, she was in full creeping mode.

By now there were other signs of life. Flies buzzing, a hideous smell like meat was rotting, wood mushrooms growing from actual wood. And it was the wood that interested Kim most of all because it was in the form of a building.

It seemed to be a bar, more or less. An old, decrepit, decaying, disgusting version of a saloon. The rot was most definitely not a dry rot.

Light came through the windows and the door, sounds of indistinct chatter drifted out, and Kim definitely wanted to see who was in there before they saw her.

Kim crept to a window and peered inside. What she saw made her want to retch. They were standing and sitting around, drinking and talking like ordinary people, but they were so very clearly dead.

Putrid decaying corpses. Rotting flesh hanging from bone. They wore moldy tattered clothes on the verge of simply falling apart.

She strained her ears and listened to the conversation nearest her. Three of them around a table, all male.

“This is the biggest opportunity in centuries,” one said, “maybe more.”

“I'll believe it when these eyes see sunlight again,” a second said. Kim thought that he might have been blonde, but she wasn't even sure what she was seeing was actual hair. “Until then it's just more talk.”

“The first hounds have already gone through,” the first said, clearly enthusiastic. “Word is they're meeting no resistance.”

“How could there be resistance?” the third chimed in. “They've kept us all locked up down here for so long they hardly remember we exist, much less how to fight us.”

Was that possible? Was it like with wildfires? Could it be that having no “controlled burns” of fighting these things in recorded history meant that the world was unprepared for them now?

Kim shook her head. She'd stop them now. She could do anything.

“Dogs and darkness have an easy time making it to the other side--” the second said.

“And they'll pave the way for _us_ ,” the third countered.

“I'll believe it when--” the second said again.

“We'll know soon enough,” the first said. “The important thing is that if we do get the chance, we can't afford to waste this opportunity.”

“I'm just glad it didn't open in _their_ territory again,” the third said.

_Whose_ territory?

“Life lovers,” the second spat.

“As it was, so it shall be,” the first said, raising a glass. “It was our world before and it will be our world again.”

“I'll drink to that,” the third said.

“I'll drink,” the second said.

Kim didn't want to watch that display and crept away from the building.


	2. Dying Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jacob and Shin fight to survive in a changed 2029; Tara and Josh try to save themselves and their schoolmates in 2004, Kim tries to navigate the After in hopes of finding aid.

**Part I**

**Chapter 2: Dying Light**

▲  
⁂.▲  
▲    ▲  
▲.▲.▲.▲  
▲           ▲  
▲.▲        ▲.▲  
▲    ▲     ▲    ▲  
▲.▲.▲.▲.▲.▲.▲.▲

**2029 – Earth**

They were fighting corpses.  It was the single most disgusting thing Jacob had ever done.  Eating food from dumpsters featured in many fond memories of childhood.  Wearing the same clothes for months without washing them because you've only got one set?  Not that bad.

Crawling through a sewer as part of a prison break?  Very disgusting, but not on this level.

The corpses weren't well preserved at all.  Exposed bone, exposed brain, blood that was disgustingly not like the blood of the living.  The gross decomposition that you'd expect.  There was some variation between species because for the most part only the humans had been embalmed, and even then not all of them.  Perhaps not even most.

A very dead dachshund tried to jump and bite his thigh.  Jacob kicked it away.

“We can't keep this up,” he said to Shin.

She was doubtless having an easier time, since they seemed to fear fire.  He was keeping a ball of Shin's plasma in his left hand, but he couldn't wield it the way Shin could.

Also that meant he had to keep his hand largely open, he couldn't even make a fist on his left side.  That limited combat options.

Things were not good.

“We'll make for that grove and try to lose them in the . . . trees,” Shin said.

Jacob didn't see any trees so he asked, “What trees?”

Shin made an, “Ugh,” sound, and then said, “The giant orange mushrooms,” after a pause.

Jacob looked around a bit, and then said, “Got it.”

∗ ∗ ∗

 

“Now?” Jacob asked as they ran through the mushrooms. 

“Don't have enough of a lead yet,” Shin said.  “In a second.”

“I thought zombies were supposed to be slow,” Jacob said.

“They're not zombies,” Shin said.  “Set me up.”

Jacob got in position to let his hands act as a springboard for Shin and she vaulted onto one of the mushrooms.  A moment later she helped him up.

The dead things reached where they had been.

∗ ∗ ∗

Jacob was laying on his back looking up at the sky.

They hadn't heard noises below them for a while.  The army of the dead seemed to have dispersed.

It hadn't taken that long, really.  Though shadows were long, the sun had yet to set.

Jacob sighed and then spoke.  “Given that it took them time to build up a swarm, they're obviously not that densely populated.  If we use stealth we might be safe from them.”

“Yup,” Shin said.

“You said they weren't zombies,” Jacob said.

“Notice how they didn't try to eat us?” Shin asked.

“So I guess Ishtar didn't knock down the gates of the underworld.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Jacob said.

“Oh,” Shin said in a way that made Jacob think she might actually know what he'd been talking about.  “ _Epic of Gilgamesh_ reference.”

“Good catch,” Jacob said, honestly surprised she'd gotten it.

“How do you know _The Epic of Gilgamesh_?” Shin asked.

“The internet, books, misspent youth, the fact the prison you sent me to had a good library, oral tradition --take your pick,” Jacob said to her.

“I--” This caused Jacob to actually get up enough to look at her.  Shin usually didn't hesitate like that.

“I'm sorry about prison,” Shin said.  “I didn't know they'd try you as an adult.”

_Because juvie would have been so much better_ , Jacob thought.

Jacob thought about Shin's apology for a bit before replying with, “Sorry about ruining your Halloween.”

“Thanks,” Shin said.  “We'd better scout a bit before we lose the sun.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Jacob looked around at the rotted out interior of what was once a building.  If he tried --hard-- he could imagine that there were aisles once, a counter, the signifiers of business being done.  He could imagine it, but that imagination was forced on him because there wasn't much non-imaginary stuff to base such imaginings on.

True, it was better preserved than a lot of the former buildings they'd seen, but that didn't mean much.

Finally he asked, “You're sure this used to be an electronics store?”

“Of course I'm not sure,” Shin said.  “I said that I think this was one.  I didn't memorize a map of every business in the city just because I happened to have a single mission here.”

Jacob looked up and down what he thought were once the aisles.  There just wasn't anything left.  Nothing that stood out.  Nothing that grabbed the eye.  Nothing that said, “Someone made me.”

There was only --an admittedly small slice of-- nature.  Macro fungus only, thankfully; none of the noxious mold.  But mushrooms and their many-shaped multicolored ilk were not what they were going to need to have any hope of returning to the world they knew, or rather returning the world they knew to existence and thus to them.

And all Jacob was getting out of looking was fungus.  Mushrooms, foldy things that seemed to be attempting to represent the hyperbolic plane in the normal Euclidean world, sprouts with no . . . mushroom-thing on top --like mushrooms that decided to be sharp-- ones that were packed close together, ones that imitated trees, ones that reached skyward or pushed sideways.

But no technology.

“Well there's nothing we can use here,” Jacob said.  Something caught his eye and he knelt down to pick it up from among the yellow fungus that was growing like a carpet of grass in this section of the former store.  It was metal, iron containing metal, but beyond that it was impossible to diagnose.  It was all rust on the outside and no real substance.

“Can't even tell for sure what they sold here,” Jacob said, standing back up.  “If it was even a store.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Shin checked her pockets and pouches.

Communicator, grappling gun, multispectrum specs, music player she hardly ever used for actual playing that she'd gotten two Christmases ago, antiquated MP3 player with no wi-fi access that she did use because, as much as she liked Wade, she didn't like her mother's best friend having access to her play-lists, compact --mom insisted that anyone facing off against “laser guns”, which seldom actually used real lasers, needed to have a compact-- stick of chewing gum, ballpoint pen, rebreather.

She checked her communicator, again.  No signal from anywhere.  Could be that being so close to a major magical ritual scrambled it, magic did have a habit of doing unpleasant things to her electronics, could be that with 25 years worth of divergence no one in this timeline was using the frequencies her gear was meant to pick up, or it could be that no one was transmitting anything.

“Uncle” Wade would probably never forgive her if she gave a villain his technology and told him to “go wild” but if they didn't find something Jacob could work with soon Shin was considering doing just that.

There wasn't a lot to be said for the rebreather or the compact that could redirect energy bolts, at least she didn't think there was, but maybe Jacob could do something with the technology used to make the communicator or multispectrum specs.  Certainly the communicator had a lot of sensors built right in and the specs would add even more.

Probably not enough tech to make a time machine with, but maybe enough to find other people.  There had to be someone else.

Still, hope wasn't lost just yet.  She could wait on sharing her stuff.  He wasn't gutting his stuff.

They just needed to get some idea of what they were facing.  What had happened, what they'd need to do to set things right

∗ ∗ ∗

Shin was doing some sort of introspective Shin-thing in front of one of the buildings they'd thought might be worth searching.  They'd been wrong, it had been a bust, just like everything else.

Not that they'd had much time, but the shadows were getting longer, the sun getting lower, and god only knew what kind of night vision dead people had.

Maybe it was appropriately bad.  That would be nice.  More likely, considering their luck today, it was actually very, very good.

They shouldn't linger, but a closer look revealed Shin to be taking an inventory.  That was actually a good idea.

Jacob hadn't come to work equipped for much today.  Flashlight, plasma catchers, the thing he'd been making out of cellphones as a means of maintaining his sanity while waiting, screwdrivers, soldering tools, a piece of circuit board he found pretty, _Audel's Machinist's and Tool Maker's Handy Book_ , an apple, a small monocular, random odds and ends, so forth.  There had been candy corn, but he'd used the supply before Shin had even shown up.

Not a good sign given their total inability to find anything usable in this world.

But the exploration hadn't been without benefits.  The upper floors of the buildings were gone, the floors around ground level reduced to hollow mounds at best.  Basements were toxic mold pits but if the preservation pattern persisted below ground level then maybe --if they could make gas masks or something-- they might find things that worked in those basements.

Certainly the one they'd started in had been the best preserved place they'd seen and Jacob was coming to believe that it being the best preserved had nothing to do with the fact the ritual had taken place there and everything to do with the fact that they wouldn't willingly venture into air that foul to see other, equally well preserved, basements.

So basements might be the way forward.

Not today though, today they needed to find a place to hole up for the night.  Jacob took another look around and saw something that hadn't been there before: shapes like people and perhaps a dog or wolf or some such.  The light was bad, and his eyes were a bit tired, but he was pretty sure that they didn't number among the living.

Time to get Shin.  Time to do it quietly and without any sudden movements.  As the beings drew closer he was more and more sure that they were dead.

∗ ∗ ∗

Jacob came toward her and said, “We have to hide,” while indicating some dead things headed their way.

Shin looked around; there were plenty of places and no real way to determine which was best.  She pointed to a nearby mushroom grove, and said “Orange ones served us well last time.”

Quickly and quietly they slipped into the grove of massive orange mushrooms.  Shin and Jacob watched from behind mushroom stalks as the dead, six dead people and one dead canine, walked by.  When Shin thought they were safe, she returned to what she'd been thinking about before.  She'd share her resources with Jacob --let him butcher them to make whatever needed making-- if it came to that.

But first they needed some idea of what was going on, so she said to Jacob, “We need to get the lay of the land.”

Jacob was his usual helpful self and responded with, “Civilization collapsed, decay has been turned up to an absurd degree, and we're hiding from demons in a grove of bright orange mushrooms.”

Shin corrected, “They're not demons,” without even thinking about it.

“Ok, so they're not demons and they're not zombies,” Jacob said.  “Care to share what they are?”

Shin took a bit of joy in Jacob's frustration, but just a bit.  She was supposed to be a the good one after all.  “They're draugar,” she said.

“Oh, that explains everything,” Jacob said with what Shin recognized as his maximum sarcasm.

“They're spirits who refused to abandon their earthly bodies in spite of being dead, usually it requires a nigh impossibly massive feat of will and also utter contempt for the natural order of life and death --or growth and decay, I was never clear on that point-- and for whatever reason it tends to be the worst aspects of a person that manage to return to and reanimate the body.”

In fact, some sources suggested that anyone who was sufficiently unpleasant was a potential candidate, meaning that having bad aspects made the odds of returning to one's body to life even more likely.  But this was graded on a curve.  More likely than most to come back from the dead was still pretty unlikely.

Shin sighed.  “Whatever Mancer changed,” She said, “he obviously made it a lot easier for stubborn spirits to reanimate their corpses.”

“And they attacked us because?”

“Don't know,” Shin said.  Then she shrugged.  It was a good question, but one she didn't have the answer to.  So she decided to engage in rampant speculation, “Maybe these ones are territorial, maybe they've had bad experiences with the living before and wanted to get preemptive.”

“So maybe they swarmed us and tried to kill us because we were trespassing and they wanted us off their lawn,” Jacob said.  “Oh, yay.”

“It's not important _why_ , what matters is _how_ ,” Shin said.  “We need to find out what happened after Mancer changed time.”

“Well everything I might make a time viewer out of rusted, rotted, corroded, eroded, imploded, collapsed, or decayed so--”

“I know,” Shin said.  “Let's hold a seance.”

“Because that makes sense,” Jacob said.

“It does!” Shin insisted.  “We could get living witnesses to the altered timeline.”

“Your proposed living witnesses are dead,” Jacob said.

“You know what I mean,” Shin said.

“Your girlfriend is magic,” Jacob said.  “You, not so much.”

“I'm not talking magic,” Shin said.  “Today is the first day of Allhallowtide,”

“So we put on costumes so the demons can't get us,” Jacob said, and Shin caught his total lack of interest.

“So it's one of three days when the border between life and afterlife is extremely slim.  Tomorrow is--”

“All Saints' Day,” Jacob said.  “Know any saints?”

“No, but--”

“Maybe we could get Saint Francis of 'I talk to birds' or Saint Christopher of 'Doesn't my story remind you of the thing with Jason, Hera, and the river?'”

“The day _after_ All Saints' Day,” Shin said, starting to get angry, “Is All Souls Day.  Any dead people at all.”

“And yet I can't seem to recall any cases of non-magic people summoning ghosts on All Souls Day,” Jacob said.

“Given that dead people are walking around,” Shin said, “I think that the usual barriers are a lot more porous than usual, add to that the dip on All Souls day, plus the fact that I've picked up some stuff from Kieran--”

“I wish she were here instead of you,” Jacob said which threw Shin for a moment, to Jacob Kieran was “Shin's girlfriend”, he never even used her name.  Why would he-- “She'd have a better plan.”

Shin snapped, “Do you have a better idea?”

“I hate you sometimes,” Jacob said with annoying calm.

“Just sometimes?” Shin asked her anger evaporating as she got ready for banter.

“There's a reason we only ever team up when the fate of the world is at stake,” Jacob said.  Then he pulled an apple from his pocket and was about to take a bite out of it.

“Don't!” Shin said as loudly as she thought she could get away with without giving away their position to anyone or, more importantly, any _thing_ that might wish them harm.

“I'm hungry,” Jacob said.

“It's not just the barrier between this world and the afterlife that's weak at this time of year,” Shin said.  “It's also between here and the fae world.”

“So?” Jacob asked.

“Their favorite food: apples,” Shin said.  “You bite into that thing, they smell it, and we might have to deal with them too.”

Jacob shook his head, “Isn't bobbing for apples something you rich kids do on Halloween?”

“Why is it that everything with you ends up being a class issue?” Shin asked.  She was sick of having the fact she wasn't born poor held against her.

“Why is everything with you a moral issue?” Jacob shot back.  “Good and bad, black and white, dark and light, light and. . .” Jacob paused, and --Shin noted with a tiny bit of triumphalism-- put the apple back in his pocket without biting it, “shadow.”

The way he said that last word bothered Shin.

“Into the open,” he said, rushing out of the mushroom grove himself.  “Now!”

Shin followed and asked, “What is it?” once she was clear.

“Look at a shadow, any shadow, then look at the light source,” Jacob said, pointing to the setting sun.  “Tell me what's wrong.”

At first there didn't seem to be anything off to Shin.  But the closer she looked the more she was sure that the shadows were too dark and too large.  Then she realized that some of them seemed to be consciously stretching out toward them.

“They're alive,” Shin said.

“How much you want to bet they're not friendly?” Jacob asked.

“No bet,” Shin said.  “Light up?”

“They'll see us,” Jacob said, but got out his palm-light anyway.

Shin knew Jacob wasn't talking about the shadows, which seemed to already sense them .  The draugar they'd been avoiding would be sure to see them if they were the only light sources around, but if they didn't make light then they would have no way to keep back the shadows.  So they'd need to go where the draugar weren't.

“Out of the city?” she asked.  Jacob nodded.  “Run!”

Shin lit her hands, bright not hot, she saw the beam of Jacob's light, and the two of them ran in the direction that seemed like it would take them outside of the city limits most quickly.

**⁂**

**2004 -- Earth**

Josh heard the thing pacing back and forth on the other side of the counter.  Either it had lost him and was sticking near the place where it lost the trail, or it knew where he'd gone but had serious reservations about coming closer to the mystery meat.

Then Josh heard a phone ring.  Maybe that was Wade trying to get its attention.  Please, please, _please_ let it be drawn away by the sound of the phone.

The pacing stopped.  Then, when it started moving again, the footfalls were uncertain, assuming it wasn't just wishful thinking on Josh's part, as if the thing weren't sure whether to continue after Josh or investigate the new noise.

Finally Josh heard the thing walk from the cafeteria, whatever remained of the doors wasn't swinging well on the hinges based on grinding sound produced when the thing left.  When the grinding of the hinges stopped, Josh could breathe again.

For a while Josh did nothing but sit there, still hiding behind the counter, catching his breath.  Then the prototype Kimmuniucator, which he'd set on the floor to his right, crackled to life again.

“Josh,” came Wade's voice.  “You should be clear to move now.” 

“I'm gonna need a moment,” Josh said, his body was only now beginning to relax and doing so slowly.

“Ok, it's past time I checked in with Tara's group anyway,” Wade said.  “Push the hole that looks like a button belongs over it when you're ready to move again.”

Josh nodded.  After a moment he realized that accomplished little, since the Kimmuncator was still on the ground, and not pointed in a direction where Wade would be able to see his head.  So Josh said, “Ok.”

∗ ∗ ∗

Tara found herding an auditorium full of people --or about three fourths of that, as the case may be-- through the halls to be much more difficult than she would have expected.

The school wasn't that big so there weren't too many halls she had to herd the people through.  But there were the animals to avoid so it meant keeping them all quiet, not walking too fast, definitely not running, occasionally dumping a lot of the people in a classroom or three so the amount of space they took up in the hall would shrink to something small enough to avoid detection, and repeatedly having to turn around when they were almost to their destination.  The fact that the last leg of the journey would be in the open wasn't very appealing, but they were having a hard enough time just getting to an exit near the gym without an animal sighting turning them back.

Also, Ron was getting heavy on her shoulders.

There were some improvements since they first set out.  Barkin had taken point, which was a very Barkin thing to do, leaving her to only have to worry about keeping the rear of the group under control.  Barkin had also given them direction.

But then there were some downsides too.  Barkin's group had been bloodied, as had some of the groups Wade and Josh had sent her way.  She put those who smelled of blood in the middle, hoping that those ahead of and behind them would mask their smell with that of a large mass of people who didn't want to be there.  Since that was the smell of a school, and they were in a school, it was the closest thing to camouflage she could manage.

A phone near her started to ring.  Tara carefully set down Ron, when the phone call was over she'd see if he was ready to walk on his own.  Until then he could sit with Rufus.  The naked mole rat would watch over Ron while Tara was occupied.

Someone else, a senior maybe, reached the phone first, picked up, and handed the receiver to Tara.

“Wade, I presume,” Tara said.

“Yeah, it's me.” Wade said.

“I don't like it when people hang up on me,” Tara said.  She didn't have it in her right now to muster the outrage she thought it deserved.  She'd become emotionally exhausted ages ago.

Wade was defensive, “I'm trying to save as many people as I can.”

“So am I,” Tara said, “but if you want me to have faith that you focusing your attentions elsewhere will end up saving more people then I'd like at least some faith sent my way over whether or not there's person-saving value in continuing the conversation.”

“Ok,” Wade said.

“Especially since you can apparently contact me whenever you want,” Tara said, “while I can't contact you.”

Tara heard typing.

“Cell reception in your area is unharmed,” Wade said.  “Do you have a phone?”

Once Tara had Wade's number in her phone's memory, Tara asked, “So what's the situation?”

“I'm able to track the creatures now,” Wade said.  “You're safe at the moment.  I've been drawing them away from people by making calls to empty areas, but I think they're already realizing that a ringing phone doesn't mean food.

“Most of the ones that have appeared have actually ignored the school and moved outward,” Wade.  “There are only about a half a dozen on school grounds.”

“That's very comforting,” Tara said.  She hoped the sarcasm made it to Wade.

“Do you have anyone who's gotten a good look at one?” Wade asked.

“Several,” Tara said, “but right now the group is moving on.  I'll call back when I've caught up to one.”

“How's Ron?” Wade asked.

“I'm about to check,” Tara said, “Bye Wade.”

Tara hung up without waiting to see if he had anything else to say.

She walked to Ron, squatted down to be eye to eye with him, and asked, “You ok?”

“My head feels like Shego punched me,” Ron said.

“That tends to happen when you bash it into a stack of cinder-blocks,” Tara said.

“The cinder-blocks were supposed to break,” Ron said.

“They did,” Tara said.  “Right after you did.”

After a pause Tara asked, “Can you walk, or do I have to carry you again?”

“I think I can walk,” Ron said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Four times Josh had thought he was ready only to find himself unable to actually pick up the Kimmunicator and contact Wade.  On the fifth time, though, he managed it.

“Wade, I'm ready to move,” Josh said.  “What can I do?”

“Let me-- ok, there are only two isolated groups still in the area,” Wade said.  “Both are too far from Tara's group for me to feel comfortable just giving them directions.”

“Ok,” Josh said.

“If you can join one, bring it to the other, and then bring both to Tara,” Wade said, “that's probably as much of a difference as you can make right now.  With the Kimmuicator to guide you, you should be able to steer clear of the animals.”

“Right,” Josh said.  It wasn't, exactly, that he didn't believe it, it was more that he didn't like trusting his life, or the lives of others, to something that _should_ be possible.

“I'm doing what I can to keep the animals away from everyone,” Wade said, “but there's only so much I can do from here.”

Josh looked at the map on the Kimmunicator.  “Any advice on where to go first?”

“I'd recommend the group to your northwest,” Wade said.

Josh appraised the group of red dots representing the people, looked at the blue dots representing large, angry animals, and worked out what he thought was the best route.

∗ ∗ ∗

The first person Tara came across who had encountered one of the animals was Brick Flagg.  Given that he seemed to be on the verge of a panic attack, she decided it was better not to have him be the one to describe the big scary animals to Wade.  Also Brick wasn't the brightest ever.

The next was Junior who, in spite of his moments of insight, was generally not the best at picking up on things.

Then Penny, best known for her work for various charities.  She was cradling her right arm, which was looking better, Tara thought, than when she'd joined the group.

When Penny's group had made contact, her arm was still bleeding, and it was wrapped in her shirt because they hadn't had anything better to bandage it with.  Now it was in actual bandages and, while it might still be bleeding, definitely wasn't dripping anymore.

“Penny,” Tara said to get her attention.  When she had it, she asked, “Do you think you could describe the animal to someone who's helping us?”

Penny nodded, so Tara called Wade and said, “I've got someone who can describe one of the animals here.  Before I give her the phone, I figured I'd give you an update.

“We're headed to a fallout shelter under the gym.  It's very slow going because this many people can't exactly sneak passed anyone or anything so whenever something we don't want to meet gets in our way we have to change course.  Hiding and unhiding is also a time consuming project.

“Some of the people here, including Penny --the girl who's going to describe the animal for you-- need medical attention.  Ron is semi-lucid.  Pretty much what you'd expect.

“You get all that?”

“Yeah,” Wade said.

“Ok,” Tara said.  She handed the phone to Penny and said, “His name is Wade, he's doing what he can to keep us safe.”

Penny nodded and took the phone.

“Hi,” she said, “what do you want to know?”

Tara wasn't sure if she should stay with her phone or go back to the back of the group.

She'd left Ron and Bonnie in charge at the back.  The look on Bonnie's face had been wonderful, but she'd actually had a good reason for the choice.  Ron still wasn't recovered enough to take over the responsibility, while Bonnie had the presence, force, and attention to do it but lacked Ron's experience with bad situations.

Hopefully together they'd be up to the task, if they didn't kill each other.

Tara had made the argument that if Bonnie did this she'd be even with Ron for saving their lives at camp Wanaweep and saving Bonnie specifically when she'd been kidnapped by robots.  It wasn't a particularly good argument, but it was one that would appeal to Bonnie.  The only thing Bonnie could stand less than having to work with Kim or Ron was feeling like she owed one of them something.

In the end Tara decided to stay with the phone and listened to Penny describe the animal.

“It was a dog,” Penny said.  “Yeah, well it was the biggest dog I've ever seen.” Pause.  “No.  Bigger.” Pause.  “Not shaped like that though, more like a husky or something.”

_Great_ , Tara thought, _a dire wolf of doom_.

“Its fur was all black.  That's how it snuck up on us.  It was hard to make out in the darkness.”

Long pause.

“Its claws are sharp.  Really sharp.  The wounds on my arm are more like incisions than lacerations.” Pause.  “I volunteer at the hospital every Saturday.” Pause.  “The impression that I've gotten from people who were bitten is that the teeth aren't that sharp.” Pause.  “Yeah, more ripping than cutting.”

Long pause.

“I don't know . . . smaller than a bear.” Pause.  “It _was_ really cold . . . I didn't even think of it at the time, but shouldn't it have been hot?”

Long pause.

“I can't think of anything else; anything in particular you're interested in?” Pause.  “Ok.” Penny looked to Tara and said, “He wants to talk to you.”

Tara took the phone and said, “Wade, go.”

“I can guide you passed the dogs,” Wade said, “but given the size of your group and how fast the dogs can move, I think we'd have to do it in stages.”

Tara surveyed the group again then said, “It'd take a lot of stages.”

“Is there anywhere people can wait until--”

“If there were a safe place we'd use that instead of the fallout shelter,” Tara said.

“If they can keep turning you back just by walking around at random,” Wade said, “Then you'll never make it to the fallout shelter.”

“Then guide us around them a little at a time,” Tara said.  She started walking towards the front of the group.  If there was going to be guiding that's where she'd need to be.  “We'd be there by now if we could tell when the .  .  .” Tara still wasn't up for calling monsters that were hunting them “dogs”, it seemed to understate the problem, she settled on, “things,” and then finished with, “were following us and when they weren't.”

 ∗ ∗ ∗

Josh had about a dozen people, eleven to be exact, with him as he made his way toward the final group.  Movement was done by sprinting to the next spot to hide when there were no blue dots around, catching their breath, waiting for a new opportunity with the blue dots not in the way, and sprinting again.

Even with the breath catching he was getting worn down, and he could see the others were too.

The Kimmunicator crackled to life.

“Well, I found out what the animals actually are,” Wade said.

“What?” Josh asked.

“Dogs,” Wade said.

“There's no such thing as a dog that big,” Josh said.

“Obviously not normal dogs,” Wade said.  “You look like you're pretty close to getting everybody.”

“Just have to cross the tennis courts,” Josh said.  The tennis courts behind Middleton High School were a large open area enclosed in chain link fence.  The only idea that Josh could think of that was worse than going through them was going around them.

Thus the final sprint would be across a large open area in a chain-link cage, in the dark, where they might be mauled or eaten.

“I don't have any help I can give you out there,” Wade said.  “In fact, I was hoping you might have ideas.”

“About what?” Josh asked.

“Tara's group is trying to get to a fallout shelter under the gym because it seems like it's the safest place,” Wade said.  “The problem is getting them there.  There's safety in numbers, but it's also a lot harder to move a larger group.

“I can't figure out how to get the dogs away from them for long enough to let them get there,” Wade said.

Josh could.  Josh could think of a great way.  It just wasn't one that he particularly liked.

“What are you thinking?” a member of his current group asked.

“We need bait,” Josh said.  “The phone idea was good, but if we really want to get them out of the way we need someone to catch their attention and then lead them somewhere else.” His voice shook a bit as he said it.  He remembered running for the cafeteria.

Running from one of them was a lot worse than running in hopes of avoiding them.

“I'm on the track team,” another member of the group said.

“So am I,” a third chimed in.

“Ok,” Josh said, “But can you sprint a long distance run?  Because that's what it would take.

“We could break it up,” was the response.  “Like a relay.”

“That's a good idea,” Wade said.  “The Kimmunicator could always be with the runner, and once someone was done with their leg and the dogs were after the next person, they'd know the way back to the gym was clear.

“We could move all of Tara's group, and all but one of yours,” Wade said.

“We still have to get all of my group,” Josh said.  “I'll call you back when I'm across the tennis courts.”

“Got it,” Wade said.  The signal shut down.

Josh looked at the map.  The red dots, the blue dots.  Then he asked, “Everybody ready?”

He got nods of yes, but he knew the truth.  None of them would ever be ready.  Definitely not him.  They just had to deal with going when they weren't ready.

So he said, “Run!”

∗ ∗ ∗

“A distraction relay?” Tara asked.  Then she had to tune out Barkin talking about military tactics.  A sound tactician would be useful here, but Barkin just strung together words in a way that sounded vaguely meaningful while in fact being completely vacuous.

He'd been in the military, sure, but he'd never been one to make plans, only execute the orders that were passed down to him after the plans were made.

Tara had to think it over for a while.  She believed that a larger group was in fact safer.  No one had survived a one on one encounter with the animals.  There were a couple of cases where someone just managed to outrun having such an encounter in the first place, but every single person amoung them who had actually faced off against one of the animals and lived had done so because other people in their group had been able to help them get away.

Still, what good was sticking together if they never got to a safe place?  There had to be an endgame beyond surviving the moment if any of this were going to mean anything.

They rounded a corner and saw a severed hand, nothing else left of owner but blood.

“Alright,” Tara said, “I'll start looking for volunteers.

∗ ∗ ∗

“For the record,” Josh said, “I think this is a stupid idea.”

“Noted,” Wade said.  “You don't have to participate.”

“No,” Josh said, “I'll do my leg.”

Then Josh handed the Kimmunicator to another student, and got ready to hide and wait.

∗ ∗ ∗ 

“If we want to keep all of the dogs in the area occupied, we need to start with three runners,” Wade said.

“We know that Wade,” Tara told him.

Wade had lines open to two other people which, plus her, made the three runners.

“Ok, Tara, you're up first” Wade said.  “Go . . . NOW!”

Tara sprinted away, loudly burst through a door she'd never understood the purpose of anyway because it just separated one hall from another section of largely identical hall, ran down the second hall-

“The first one heard you and is on your trail,” Wade said over the phone.  “Take a hard left at the next intersection.” Tara did and, out of the corner of her eye, saw a large black form in one of the classrooms.

She didn't slow down.

“You've got two,” Wade said.  “When you reach the end of the hall go outside and turn right.”

She bodily slammed into the door, using the impact to kill her forward momentum, and then sprinted to the right.

“Third one's coming,” Wade said, “that's all of them in this direction.  I'm calling the next leg.”

In front of her a desk smashed through a window.  She jumped in, someone else jumped out, and her leg of the journey was over.

She stayed out of sight, ignored the pain where the broken glass had cut into her, and tried to slow her breathing.

The three dogs passed the window and she was free to return.

She was walking slowly, still trying to catch her breath, when her phone rang.

“Tara,” Wade said, “I need you to get back to the others.”

“What's going on?” she asked, even though her exhaustion made her want to say, “No.”

“I don't know,” Wade said.  “I'm getting strange temperature readings.  Not like the dogs, but I think there's something headed for the group.”

“On it,” Tara said and started running back to where she'd left the others.

∗ ∗ ∗

Josh was waiting to be the last leg of the relay, in theory the group should be mostly safe by now, all he had to do was to keep the dogs occupied for the runners to make it back.

Someone ducked into the classroom he was waiting in, he snatched the offered Kimmunicator on his way out of the room and then ran.  Before long he could hear the dogs behind him.  Was it six or seven?  He didn't quite remember.

“Josh, I've updated the map to show something elses,” Wade said.  “Or somethings else.  We don't know what they are yet so your best bet is to stay clear.”

Josh glanced down and saw that the red and blue dots had been joined by areas colored in a lighter blue than the dots marking the dogs.

That seemed wonderful.  Entire areas of question mark, rather than just points of dog, that he'd have to avoid.

∗ ∗ ∗

As Tara approached the gym she saw that most of the group was already inside, so that, at least, was good news.  She also saw dark shapes --though “shapes” might be giving the things too much credit-- which she thought were approaching the people.

She couldn't seem to focus on them.  Her eyes seemed to want to go right through them.  Definitely not dogs.

The dark things reached the group a moment before she did and . . . they seemed like darkness.  But how could there be darker dark than dark?  How could shadows move?

They also seemed to be bad for the people.  Whenever someone touched one they flinched away, but soon everyone was surrounded, soon after engulfed, and whatever was happening, it was slowing them down.

If they were somehow creatures of darkness, then Tara thought maybe light could keep them back.  It was a major leap, but she didn't have a lot of options.

She ran into the group, thus into the darker dark, and was immediately chilled to to the bone.  She made for the center of the dark and shouted, “Rufus, Diablo Sauce!”

The rodent threw her a packet and, with fingers shaking from the cold, she replicated a stunt from Ron's overly-long talent show performance: Fire breathing.

The darker shadows scattered, leaving everyone outside in the not-as-dark dark of a cloudy night, and the cold dissipated with the departure.

Tara herself, however, had been reduced to a shivering mass.

“Great trick T,” Bonnie said as she helped Tara to her feet.

“She got it from my act,” Ron said as he too helped Tara.

Tara just shouted, “Everyone get inside!”

Ron and Bonnie helped Tara follow her own command.

**⁂**

**2004 – The After**

Kim didn't know all that many dead people.  Most people she knew were in her age group or professionals near the prime of their careers.  Not too many older people.  Still, Kim had faith that dead people could not be wholly bad.

The mention of “life lovers” had given her a new goal and, in theory, a new direction.  She was going to find the good dead people and get advice from them on how to get back to the world of the living and how to save the world of the living once she got there.

She wasn't trying to get up, she wasn't trying to get out, so she'd have a different approach, ideally she'd go in an outward spiral to search for these other dead people's territory, in practice she'd probably go on a pseudo-random walk in which she tried to angle to the left more often than the right, but not so much more often as to go in a circle.

She was without _Team Possible_ , but she was still _a_ Possible and that meant she could do anything, even deal with this ferociously weird sitch.

She just had to be more careful.  When she was solo she tended to underestimate the amount she usually relied on backup.  It was how she ended up secured to a wall inside of the world's largest cheese wheel.  It was how she'd been captured by Drakken this time.

She couldn't afford to make the same mistake again.  Not here.

Just because anything was possible didn't mean that a given thing would come easy, just because she could do anything didn't mean that she _would_ be able to do a specific thing if she let herself get sloppy.  She didn't have Wade, she didn't have Ron, she didn't have Rufus.  And she didn't have much in the way of resources.

∗ ∗ ∗

Even in the afterlife, it seemed, there were things that could make you giggle.

She'd found that the deeper she went, the more signs of “life” there were, so now her attempted expanding spiral also had a downward trajectory.  There were settlements she'd skirted the edges of, mockeries of those in the living world, and here, it seemed, a sign that indicated “No Ammit Allowed” assuming she was interpreting it correctly.

After someone empowered by Anubis had tried to take out pro-wrestlers he had a grudge against, Kim had decided that Ancient Egyptian Religion might be worth her attention.  As such, she could easily recognize a picture of the eater of hearts.

Given that Ammit was a god known for sending dead people to a second, more devastating, death, Kim could see why dead people might not want her around.

Other than the sign, this settlement didn't have much of interest to Kim, there was no indication that she might have crossed into a different territory, and thus no reason to risk the attention of the ones dwelling in it.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Everything dies,” Kim softly said to herself.  If she was right she was looking at a river god.  Dead river, dead god.  It was like half remembered echoes of water, afterimages and impressions, a sense of water without actually getting wet.  It was like a happy memory that had turned sad because of the knowledge that one could never relive it again.

It made Kim want to cry.

It wasn't, however, what she was looking for.

It had attendants, and Kim had no way of knowing if they were good, bad, or neutral dead people.  She gave them a wide berth and continued on.

∗ ∗ ∗

Time was difficult to gauge.  There was no sun, there were no stars.  Kim didn't wear a watch.  She was without her usual gadgets.

How long had it been since the river god?  How long since the last bad-dead-people settlement?

She was now in a place that had to be filed under "Ferociously Weird".

It looked like a carnival --an American-style traveling circus-- that seemed remarkably pristine, given the decayed state of everything else she'd encountered, but was also entirely empty.

Just a large place with rides, games, bright lights, attractions of all sorts, and a total lack of anyone in it.  No one, living or dead.

Not creepy at all, that.

There was a strange mist in the air, strange because none of the other caverns had had any, that spread the glow from the lights well beyond their sources.  As Kim surveyed the area she decided that her best way forward was to go through the carnival.  The only passages out were on the other end of the cavern and if she doubled back she'd have to go a long way.

If she went around she'd be out in the open for a long time, where if she were in the carnival itself she'd have lots of potential cover to hide in if anyone did show up.

As she approached, Kim had an increasing feeling that the entire area had a dreamlike quality to it, though she couldn't really say why, and she had the impression that she was getting further from the reality she knew.

“Further”?  Or was it “farther”?

Once she arrived she kept low and made sure there were always things obstructing line of sight in as many directions as possible.  She felt like she was floating as she made her way through the place, and size and mass didn't seem to have as much meaning.

She passed empty concession stands, booths with games and prizes but no vendors, no operators.  She was hungry and thirsty, but didn't trust the unguarded concessions.

A hurricane ride came to life as she passed it, for a moment she thought she'd been spotted but no one came, just a large mechanical ride operating on its own with no one in it.  The mist and the spinning warped and twisted the light, which seemed to leak out of the lights themselves more than it seemed to shine.

The effect was almost hypnotic.

Definitely “further”.  No amount of distance could explain this, it was entirely about degree.

If she made it out alive, if the world didn't end, she was totally going to do a great job on the “problem words” quiz in English class next Friday.

She made it the rest of the way without incident, and was glad to put that particular cavern behind her.

∗ ∗ ∗

Kim expected ghosts to look like they had in life, but the ones she was seeing now were, at best, caricatures of humanity.  Traits exaggerated almost beyond recognition.

The worst were the gluttons at the banquet table.  They were like something from the fever dreams of fat-shaming fitness peddlers.  Watching them made Kim feel sick, and she averted her gaze, but in the crowd here they were almost unremarkable.  They were the worst, yes, but hardly by much.

Mixed among the twisted people were some who didn't even appear to be human, and maybe they weren't, but if so Kim had no idea what they were.

_Twice is a coincidence_ , Kim told herself.  This was three times.  The river god, the deserted carnival, and now this.  She wasn't in the same place she started.  She'd obviously successfully passed into some different territory, but she didn't feel she was in the land of the life lovers now.  She didn't know where she was.

Next time she had a chance she'd take a hard left.  Best to skirt the territory of the bad ones to make sure she didn't miss the ones she was looking for by making too wide of a spiral.

∗ ∗ ∗

After traveling through largely unremarkable less surreal surroundings and uninhabited caves, Kim heard a sound that was like an injection of joy straight into her heart.  Or … maybe the pleasure center of her brain.  Whatever.

It was a slow, steady, almost annoying dripping of water.

At least she assumed it was water.

With energy she thought she'd long since lost she ran to chase the source of the sound, hit several dead ends --echoes could throw one off so easily-- and finally located the source of the dripping sound.

Cautious at first, she touched it, smelled it, looked at it as closely as she could, and finally concluded to the best of her ability that it was indeed water.

She was so thirsty that she wasn't willing to wait for the water to drip, she licked it off of the wet rocks, then, when she reached the point where she thought she might lose more than she gained by doing that, positioned herself so that when it dripped the drop would fall into her mouth.

Drip.  Wetness.  Drip.  The nectar of the gods.  Drip.  Hydration.  Drip.  The stuff of life.  Drip.  Wondrous, wondrous water.

∗ ∗ ∗

Kim cautiously approached what looked like a standard American cookie cutter home in suburbia, right down to the white picket fence.  Of course it was showing signs of wear.  Paint on the fence peeled, the wooden siding was warped and, in some places, missing.  Instead of a grass lawn was what Kim might euphemistically describe as compost, or, if she wanted to be more honest with herself, as a giant festering pile of sick and wrong _ick_.

If things were going _as planned_ then this was not a friendly place.  After wandering so far afield, the _revised_ revised plan called for skirting around the hostile territory so that she didn't risk missing her target by going too far from the center on her first pass.  Then she'd go further out if she'd done a full circuit without seeing any indication of where the “life lovers” were.

The only way to make sure that she did that was to first get back to the hostile territory, and then back off a bit.  Thus, even if everything were going exactly according to plan, this was not a place she'd be safe.

She quietly hopped the fence and tried very hard not to think of what she was standing in.  It didn't work.  Trying not to think of something never worked.

At least she was wearing her mission clothes: no bare skin below the waist.

With the disgusting lawn behind her she just had to go up the. . . Kim felt wood start to buckle beneath her and heard the beginning of a structure breaking crack.  How did the dead people use these stairs?  How much lighter could a corpse really be?

Before the step could give way she backed off, then she crawled up the porch steps.  With her weight distributed over a larger area, the stairs held.

She crept to a window and looked in on a scene that was, in it's own way, more mind bending than the empty floaty misty dreamlike carnival had been.

If they weren't dead, if their walls and bodies weren't rotting and moldering, if agents of decay weren't feasting on their flesh in a way that made Kim want to vomit, if all of these things weren't true, they'd look a 1950s TV family straight from central casting.

They were watching an ancient television that must have been operating on some kind of magic because Kim was pretty sure that she could see rust lined voids where some vital components were supposed to be.

“While the gateway is nowhere near stable enough for any of our forces to pass through at this stage, rest assured that the lesser beings are gaining a foothold in the living world,” a voice from the TV said.  “We recommend that you channel all of your anticipation into preparation.  Various military and militia organizations are accepting and training new recruits in record volumes.  Stay tuned and your local broadcasters will tell you about the options to enroll near you.”

Having confirmed that she'd passed back into enemy territory, Kim made her way off of the porch, across the compost, over the fence, and back the way she came.  She'd try to stay just outside of their territory now.  Occasionally heading back in to make sure that she hadn't gotten too far away.

∗ ∗ ∗

By now Kim was pretty much ready to encounter anything.  At least she felt that way.  Hulking nine headed vaguely person shaped thing?  Seen it.  It didn't seem malevolent, but Kim decided not to bother it, and stay well out of sight, just to be on the safe side.  A talking squirrel mumbling to itself about how “the corpse chewing serpent”'s insults weren't what they used to be?  Been there but stayed out of its way as it seemed to be in a hurry.  Girl who could turn into sand?  Avoided her.  She _did_ seem malevolent.

Even so, the trips she took back into the hostile territory were always unpleasant.  That she was in a place with rotting corpses that could still walk around, talk, and do things like that didn't faze her anymore.  The concept wasn't a problem.  They were putrid and noxious, though.  They were surrounded by all possible markers of death and decay.

Their buildings, like their bodies, had been turned into mockeries of the ones used by the living.  Kim doubted it was through any sort of intent, they just suffered under the weight of entropy, and were slowly devoured by decay.

That could still get to Kim.  Her mind was prepared to deal with this sitch; her stomach was not.

Also, their conversations were entirely unhelpful.  Scorning the living seemed to be a required part of any conversation, so at least she knew that she wasn't hiding from the “life lovers” by accident, but whenever they said anything of substance they always seemed to take for granted things that Kim didn't know.  The very information that Kim wanted to learn was what went without saying for them.  At least that was how it seemed.

∗ ∗ ∗

“Look, I'm not one of _them_ \--I don't think those in first-life are somehow more worthy than us-- I just don't see why we'd even want to return to that wretched world.”

There was “them” again, but no indication where “they” might be found.  “They” were always “them” never, “those guys up north” or “the people across the river” or anything at all that indicated who or where “they” were.  It's not as if Kim could use the information, she didn't have a compass or a map, but it was still frustrating that the only marker of “Them” beyond occasional mention of “life loving”, was the fact that it was always said with the utmost disdain.  It wasn't helpful.

Couldn't someone just say, “Of course you know Bob. . .” and deliver all the information Kim needed?

Kim shook her head turned to sneak away.  Then she slipped.  It wouldn't have been a problem, but she instinctively reached out and grabbed for something to steady herself on.  Her left hand caught a windowsill.  Rather than support her weight the board split.

There were shouts inside the building, but Kim was more concerned with getting on her feet and running than trying to listen.

A door burst open as she reached the edge of this property.  The voices became easier to make out, “It's probably just--”

“No!  We can't take any chances with a gateway open!”

In any world a shotgun pointed in her direction was more than enough impetus for Kim to make a tactical retreat.  That it was fired was almost more a formality than anything.  So long as the shot missed her, and it did, a loaded gun being pointed at her was no less of a reason to run than a loaded gun being pointed at her after it had fired a shot.  Even if she hadn't already been leaving, it was definitely time to retreat now.

In this particular case she had no one to regroup with and no reason to try to get around the person with the gun.  She just had to get away.  She kept running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be the most notes I've ever done. None are vital, so do feel free to ignore them if the length, or anything else about them, bothers you.
> 
> • Draugar (singular draugr) are undead creatures from actual folklore that are pretty much like they were in life only dead. Jacob and Shin have encountered a sort of backwater area, not exactly a cultural or technological center, and so the draugar there have been reduced to close combat to get rid of people and things they dislike.
> 
> As Shin will repeatedly note, though, they're not zombies. They can think and act in all the ways a sufficiently unpleasant person can, they can be killed (second death) via grievous bodily harm to parts of the body other than the head, and they have no particular interest in eating anyone. (Expanding on that first point, since they can do anything a living human can, the reliance on close combat here is hardly a universal trait.)
> 
> When I learned about them, I realized they were a perfect fit for the story. There are both mindless and animalistic opponents in this story (see the things Tara calls dire wolves of doom for an example of the second) but since draugar have human abilities they can be foes that are both cunning and knowledgeable. They're an _intelligent_ enemy
> 
> The rules about the creation of draugar have changed in the setting for the same reason everything else has changed, but that's of little concern to Shin and Jacob since these ones have already been created.
> 
> • The Epic of Gilgamesh reference is to when Anu initially denies Ishtar the Bull of Heaven. She responds (Kovacs translation):
> 
> _If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,_   
>  _I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,_   
>  _I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,_   
>  _and will let the dead go up to eat the living!_   
>  _And the dead will outnumber the living!_
> 
> • Not eating apples on Halloween is real folklore, and I have no idea how that fits in with apple bobbing.
> 
> • Junior and Penny are easy students to forget about since, I think, they appear in one episode each. Junior was one of the detentionites in _Tick Tick Tick_ and Penny was a girl who appeared in the half-length episode _The Truth Hurts_
> 
> • I kind of feel like I need to address how at this point in the story characters are being pushed outside of their usual bounds, mostly because of Josh.
> 
> Depending on your interpretation of his appearances Josh in the series is either self-absorbed to the point of nigh imperturbability, or has a Taoism level of detachment that allows him to go with the flow no matter how strange said-flow may be. That's obviously not happening here. He started this installment terrified, for example.
> 
> I'm not rewriting the characters, or at least that's not my goal, but I am definitely showing sides that weren't in the show.
> 
> Tara is not being her usual cheery self, Josh is unable to bring is usual cool acceptance of whatever happens to bear, Bonnie is in a position where being as adversarial as usual would be detrimental to self preservation, Kim is completely cut off from her support network, Jacob and Shin are completely out of their element and without any of the people they usually work with, and the only one not being forced to act beyond the norm yet is Ron, who has a head injury.
> 
> Worth noting, though, that this is still the first night (well, evening for Jacob and Shin) and characters will be more able to be their usual selves once they've had time to process things.
> 
> One of the benefits of working with established characters is that, in theory at least, their usual is already known so having them act in an unusual way isn't mistaken for the character's normal way of being.
> 
> • Kim in the After:
> 
> The After in this setting is more expansive than any one religion's Afterlife. You'll see Kim crossing afterlives and if I could do justice to one that's entirely unlike anything Kim's prepared for I'd love to show here crashing into one face first because . . . well, just because. Unfortunately, I don't know any such ones well enough to do them Justice.
> 
> The one you'll see featured most in this story is Helhiem. Not the part where Hel lives, a sort of backwater outskirt that claimed, run, and inhabited by people who wanted to return to the world of the living and take over. You know, where the jerks live.
> 
> When she isn't heading away through strangeness, that's where Kim is. Thus her (off camera) sightings of a troll, Ratatoskr, and a mara.
> 
> Draugar are from Norse folklore, Helheim is from Norse Cosmology. Yeah, there's a connection.

**Author's Note:**

> You would not believe how hard it is to make a damned Sierpinski Triangle when working with text. I probably should have given up and embedded an image.
> 
> There's a reason that I called 2004, which is where the bulk of the story takes place, "Kim's past" instead of simply labeling it "the present". It's a reminder, to myself and hopefully to you, that we can't take for granted a lot of things we usually would.
> 
> Since the 2004 action begins at the climax of _Hidden Talent_ *deep breath* Kim and Josh have never been on a date, Ron's last major encounter with Josh was going trick or treating together, Tara is still smitten with a clueless Ron, Ron hasn't been to Yamanouchi and isn't aware that he still has Mystical Monkey Power, Ron's never turned evil, the Pan Dimensional Vortex inducer hasn't been used to travel into TV-dimension, and it has not yet been 100 years since the Tri-City-Expo.
> 
> Some of that matters only incidentally, but it's a lot of stuff. _Hidden Talent_ is somewhat before the halfway-point of of the series in terms of episodes, and more like one third of the way in in terms of in-universe timeline. I always knew that what went wrong would be related to the Transportulator, but as I started writing it sort of surprised me how much hadn't happened.


End file.
